Ongoing Reports From The Long October

I'm trying to come up with some poetic-sounding names for the Shutdown Showdown of 2013, and right now "The Long October" is about as good as I can think of a name.

Because for the most part we're now expecting the current Shutdown to merge into the scheduled Debt Ceiling crisis set for October 17th, simply because the House Republicans are driving the nation off the cliff (via Jonathan Chait at the New York):

...Last Tuesday, House Republicans shut down the federal government, demanding that Obama abolish his health-care reform in a tactically reckless gamble that most of the party feared but could not prevent. More surreal, perhaps, were the conditions they issued in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling later this month. Lifting the debt ceiling, a vestigial ritual in which Congress votes to approve payment of the debts it has already incurred, is almost a symbolic event, except that not doing it would wreak unpredictable and possibly enormous worldwide economic havoc. (Obama’s Treasury Department has compared the impact of a debt breach to the failure of Lehman Brothers.) The hostage letter House Republicans released brimmed with megalomaniacal ambition. If he wanted to avoid economic ruin, Republicans said, Obama would submit to a delay of health-care reform, plus tax-rate cuts, enactment of offshore drilling, approval of the Keystone pipeline, deregulation of Wall Street, and Medicare cuts, to name but a few demands. Republicans hardly pretended to believe Obama would accede to the entire list (a set of demands that amounted to the retroactive election of Mitt Romney), but the hubris was startling in and of itself.

The debt ceiling turns out to be unexploded ordnance lying around the American form of government. Only custom or moral compunction stops the opposition party from using it to nullify the president’s powers, or, for that matter, the president from using it to nullify Congress’s. (Obama could, theoretically, threaten to veto a debt ceiling hike unless Congress attaches it to the creation of single-payer health insurance.) To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people. It is a shockingly powerful self-destruct button built into our very system of government, but only useful for the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic. But it turns out to be the perfect tool for the contemporary GOP: a party large enough to control a chamber of Congress yet too small to win the presidency, and infused with a dangerous, millenarian combination of overheated Randian paranoia and fully justified fear of adverse demographic trends...

We're basically unable to do anything about the current Shutdown: the Democrats are attempting to force a vote on the House floor for a "clean Continuing Resolution" using an obscure mechanism called a "discharge petition", but to pull it off they seemingly need more than 17 Republicans to commit publicly to vote for it.  And while there's a solid number of anonymous House Republicans complaining about the Far Right taking their own party hostage during these "negotiations", only two of them have been brave up to stand up... because if anyone else did so they'd be primaried within a heartbeat.

Molly Ball at The Atlantic makes the observation that Republicans are the one voting bloc that refuses to compromise (the poll is linked from her article):

Republicans, it seems, are different: They value compromise far less and principle far more than other Americans. In refusing to give ground, then, Republican politicians are reflecting their base's priorities.

This result helps explain more than just GOP intransigence, it seems to me. It also helps explain the parties' mutual incomprehension. Since Democrats value compromise by such an overwhelming margin, they assume their opponents do too. But Republicans, it turns out, are wired a bit differently.

Andrew Sullivan makes the observation that the Republicans aren't so much refusing to compromise, it's that they can't accept the reality of the situation and are grasping at anything:

They say they want to reverse what they see as the end of American freedom because of the dawn of public subsidies for private insurance policies, based on a Heritage Foundation idea and implemented by their last presidential nominee in his home state. Okay, so how about running a campaign for Congress and presidency that explicitly promises to repeal Obamacare entirely? Oh, yes, they already did that and lost. How about upping the ante and making it explicit in the campaign that this is the very last chance to end Obamacare and save America? Oh, yeah, I forgot. They did that too. So what do they want? I’m not sure they even know.

Even though there's another poll, this time on approval ratings for the parties involved - Obama, Democrats in Congress, and Republicans in Congress - and showing why this is still a serious problem for Republicans continuing this path to self-destruction:

Problem with that poll is while the numbers show the Republicans in trouble with Americans overall (at 70 percent disapproval), the House GOP are only worried about the Americans (Tea Partiers) in their gerrymandered districts (and yes, the gerrymander is one of the things at fault here), and most of them are in the 24 percent bracket still approving of their hostage-taking BS.

This is going to be a Long October after all.

I only hope this won't interfere with trick-or-treating... 'cause if our kids can't trick-or-treat due to an economic collapse then we are going to see some SERIOUS street riots led by kids dressed up in superhero costumes and wielding plastic pirate swords.  CANDY OR DEATH!  CANDY OR DEATH...!

Presidential Character: Week Thirty-Four, Why DID Everyone Like Ike?

So, Professor Barber, why DID everyone like Ike, uh Dwight D. Eisenhower?

...Furthermore, Eisenhower often displayed optimism; he was certainly no gloomy Gus in the White House, though he was often irritable and depressed... (Presidential Character, p. 179)

...Eisenhower did not feel a duty to save the world or to become a great hero, but simply to contribute what he could the best he was able... Yet Eisenhower very much wanted to make a contribution.  Once while laboring over a speech he said, "You know, it is so difficult.  You come up to face these terrible issues, and you know that what is in almost everyone's heart is a wish for peace, and you want so much to do something..." (p.182)

To this, even with Barber's assertion Eisenhower was a Passive-Negative Character:

The key orientation is toward performing duty with modesty, and the political adaptation is characterized by protective retreats to principle, ritual and personal virtue.  The political strength of this character is its legitimacy.  It inspires trust in the incorruptibility and the good intentions of the man... (p.182)

Eisenhower came to the Presidency as the commanding general of European forces during the Second World War, one of a select group of non-political generals - Washington and Taylor - to do so (other generals like Grant, Hayes and Garfield - mostly from the Civil War - had been converted into true Republicans as part of their response to the war and Reconstruction politics).  How he came to be the general-in-chief of a major theater of war speaks to his basic character traits of Modesty and (for the Passive-Negative) Duty.

Eisenhower was not the best-known candidate for the job of representing the U.S. among the Allied forces against Hitler's Axis.  He'd been a middle-of-the-pack officer pretty much from West Point onward, and while he'd worked hard to earn his promotions up to colonel by 1940 he still lacked a few things such as battlefield experience.  But he knew tanks and how to deploy them, impressed during the training exercises before the U.S. entered the war (by 1940 FDR's administration and the Army both knew war was coming), and got promoted up to brigadier general on the eve of conflict.

One joke floating around was that General George Marshall, the head of the whole Army at the time, promoted Eisenhower to head up Allied efforts in Europe because Eisenhower had served as an aide to General MacArthur, and that the experience of massaging that huge ego made Ike the best expert to keep the British and French allied generals in line.  But the truth of it was Marshall saw in Eisenhower the organizational skills needed to manage such a massive endeavor, and the sense of Duty to the cause to make it work.

Marshall must have seen something else, the unique trait Eisenhower had that no other P-N character showed: Ike was unusually optimistic and forward-thinking.  He didn't see disasters as such, he saw them as opportunities.

During the beginning stages of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, Eisenhower met with his subordinate generals about counter-offensives.  Rather than take the gloomy approach that the unexpected German offensive could divide the Allied front and prolong the war, Eisenhower saw it as a chance to finally get the Germans out in the open and finished off rather than slogging through a potentially massive defensive effort.  He's on record saying "The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not a disaster.  There will be only cheerful faces at this table."  He then turned to General Patton - his blood knight - and asked how quickly they could relieve the American paratroopers at Bastogne.  Patton said 48 hours, and pulled it off.

Making the call on D-Day.  The weather for early June 1944 was wet, rainy, windy, terrible for beach landings and paratrooper drops.  The Germans, having developed excellent profiles on opposing generals, figured Eisenhower's overly cautious nature would never give the order to go in bad weather.  And in most cases for a P-N character they'd be right.  But there was that optimism: the Allied meteorologists told Ike there was a chance the morning of June 6th would have a slight window before dawn to work out.  Knowing that June was the last best chance to get into Europe before summer turned into winter, and that he needed to go sooner or later, Eisenhower went against his nature (ironically, his sense of Duty to get the landings over with made him do it) and made the call.  Even then, he knew it was a giant risk.  He wrote one letter praising the troops and cheering them onto victory.  He wrote a second letter in case the landings failed, and insisted that any blame be put on him ("It is mine alone.").

It was not only Eisenhower's judgment... it was not only Eisenhower's organizational skills... it was Eisenhower's Modesty, his acceptance of Duty, his non-Negative sense of Optimism in others that made him so likable.

And that likability made him the hot political ticket once World War II ended.  Like his predecessor Taylor, Eisenhower had made it a point to not even vote in elections up until 1948 or so (both Democratic Party leaders and Republicans sent out feelers).  He preferred at the time to retire out as Chief of Staff (having reorganized the entire military into the Department of Defense) and serve as school President at Columbia U.  By 1950 he accepted the call back to duty by becoming the commander of NATO forces and used his organizational skills to make that nascent military alliance work.  By 1952, with the nation deeply mired in Korea, and pressed ever more by the people around him, Ike acceded to the demand he run for office.

And he won in massive landslides (1952 and re-election 1956).  "I Like Ike" being one of the most successful - and obvious - campaign slogans of all time.

But Eisenhower didn't enter the White House at an easy time.  Solving Korea - with an armistice that has yet been resolved to this day - was one thing but the Cold War - an ongoing chess match with the Soviet Union over Europe, Asia and the Middle East - was something else.  The Cold War affected domestic issues in the form of political witch hunts (the Red Scare) led by a glory-hogging Joseph McCarthy.  And other domestic issues involved the growing Civil Rights movement that started with Truman's desegregation of the military and was moving on towards public services and education.

Eisenhower's Passive-Negative traits did not put him in with the Far Right forces of the Republican Party, obsessed as they were with hunting down suspected Communists throughout society.  But it made it difficult for him to openly confront the likes of McCarthy.  To Ike's credit, McCarthy self-destructed by going after too many targets that wanted to fight back, especially Ike's beloved Army, and he used that distance to let McCarthy bury himself which pretty much quieted down the anti-Communist fervor for the rest of the Fifties to a low boil.

As Barber noted, Eisenhower may have fit for the most part into the P-N category but as President Eisenhower defied certain traits through both his habits and his optimism.  By habits I mean his organization: the West Wing as we know it - with a Chief of Staff, organized departments handling communications, interdepartmental issues, and policy essentials - came entirely from Eisenhower.  By his optimism I point to how Eisenhower not only kept New Deal era economic policies that worked (where the Republicans would have considered them no longer essential once the economy was chugging along and the War Effort was over), but pushed his own national agendas such as the Interstate Highway system.

If Ike had weaknesses it was a maddening level of complacency, his hands-off approach to how the various departments in the Executive branch handled themselves as well as a hands-off approach with dealing with Congress.  On one hand Eisenhower's two-term administration was relatively free of scandal - the worst was that his Chief of Staff was caught lying about an oriental rug and fur coat his wife had received as gifts - but on the other the administration allowed some branches - especially the CIA with their activities in Iran and Central America - a wide scope of questionable activity.

And while Eisenhower continued Truman's work on Civil Rights - Ike declared discrimination a "National Security issue" because Communists used it as an argument against American democratic ideals - he didn't pursue it as aggressively as Truman had.  He worked with Congress to pass legislation to create offices for civil rights investigations in the Justice Department but left them ill-defined and underfunded.  In the best respect Eisenhower's greatest achievement was calling out the National Guard and 101st Airborne to Little Rock Arkansas to enforce the court rulings to desegregate schools.  But past that Eisenhower's administration did not aggressively pursue methods to end segregation in businesses and communities: Ike would only go so far in the use of executive authority.  Passive-Negatives do not like using the full weight of the Executive branch the way an Active-Positive or Active-Negative would.

Eisenhower's legacy as President was mixed when he left office and it wasn't until well into Clinton's tenure that a better understanding of Ike's performance as leader could be seen.  The argument against him was that Eisenhower didn't "do anything," (my own father, Old School Republican that he is, said this today as I was writing portions of this article over at the parental units' home, they needed help updating their computer stuff, anyways I digress) especially in the face of McCarthyism and the growing Civil Rights fight.  But in other ways Ike did in office what was expected of him: the mentor figure, the retired general / father figure neither passionate nor angry, reserved in judgment and basically right on all matters.  He focused on the job at hand and oversaw a relatively stable period of post-war growth and adjustment.  His pursuit of the Interstate Highway construction proved one of the biggest job creating government programs in history - bigger than any New Deal project - and had a major impact on interstate commerce, population growth and dispersal, and development of cultural trends (car culture, travel, etc).

Above all, much like his Passive-Negative model of old - George Washington - Eisenhower may well have been the last true non-partisan figure in American 20th Century politics.  Republican more by necessity than ideology, Eisenhower was a self-described moderate who sought to balance out the Far Right McCarthyist elements of the party through his personal example and calls for common sense solutions.  Conservative only in action rather than thought, Eisenhower today is the go-to figure of moderates (whoever may be left) within the modern GOP.

Next up: The key word is survival on the New Frontier (sorry, I keep thinking of that Donald Fagan song)

The Cooper Union Speech Shows Us the War Is Not Really Over

(NOTE: Had to edit for an accidental grammar error)
As the Shutdown Showdown of 2013 continues unabated - and in fact may get worse - more and more critics of the modern GOP's hardline stance find themselves referring to Abraham Lincoln and the Cooper Union speech he gave before the November 1860 elections (before he even won the nomination for the Republican Party of that age).

Here's a link to the Cooper Union speech as provided by the National Parks Service:

Oops.

Here's another link that might still be up.  Most of the first half of the speech is Lincoln setting up his lawyer's argument about how the Constitution came to be, how the Founders themselves spelled out their opposition to slavery's extension, and how the Republicans of 1860 were adhering to that argument - stopping slavery's spread not slavery itself - against the wild accusations and demands of the Southern Democrats.  The Southern states even by that date were threatening open secession unless they got their way.  Lincoln eventually gets to the meat of the speech to argue against that, the part of the speech everyone's quoting:

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights.

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

If the arguments, nay demands, of the 1860 Southern Democrats sound a lot like the rhetoric of the 2013 House Republicans and their Far Right spokespeople in the media, don't be surprised.  A lot of this has to do with the Southern Strategy of the Republican Party under Nixon back in the 1970s.

The South as a voting bloc had been virulently pro-slavery since the 1820s (perhaps even earlier), and when slavery bit the dust post-Civil War and post-13th Amendment the South went virulently anti-Black.  That region of the nation was basically allowed to act that way for roughly 100 years because the North got tired of trying to fix that shit and collectively gave up.  The only reason the United States took the Civil Rights efforts of Black Americans seriously by the 1960s was because of public relations: as a global power pushing for liberty against the wave of Soviet oppression, it was hypocritical of us to deny our own citizens their own freedom and rights under the law.

As the Democratic coalition fractured by 1968 with the Dixiecrats falling in power within their own ranks, the Republicans behind Goldwater and Nixon took notice and realized the South as a voting bloc was surprisingly tight (and growing as business markets shifted southward into Texas and Florida) and could be merged to the economic and religious conservatism of the GOP.  By the time of Reagan in 1980, he was able to put together a cultural/economic/religious voting bloc that led to a dynamic pro-Republican shift in the electoral system.

But now we're seeing the problem of going with the Southern Strategy.  By allowing a platform for the basically racist elements of the southern conservatives, the Republicans unwittingly (or even worse, willingly) allowed that strain of hate to spread to the other conservative elements of the party.  Why we're seeing Republicans from non-Southern places like Iowa and Ohio and California railing against social welfare services like food stamps is from the underlying belief that the primary recipients of social aid are Blacks and other minorities.

Joan Walsh in her Salon article:

Today, the entire government has been taken hostage by leaders elected by this crazed minority, who see in the face of Barack Obama everything they've been taught to fear for 50 years. Start with miscegenation: He’s not just black, he’s the product of a black father and a white mother. (That helps explain an unconscious motive for Birtherism: They can’t get their minds off the circumstances of his conception and birth.) With his Ivy League degrees, they are sure he must be the elitist beneficiary of affirmative action. Steeped in Chicago politics, he’s the representative of corrupt urban machines controlled by Democrats – machines that ironically originated with the Irish and once kept African-Americans down, but which are now synonymous with corrupt black power...

Obama's brought all this hatred out in a big way.  Part of the open hatred the GOP and the Far Right have towards Obama is that he's a Democrat interrupting the Glorious Pax Reaganicus Era of tax cuts, deregulation, and Commie-bashing (even though tax cuts didn't work, deregulation is why we're in our current mess, and Commie-bashing went out when Communism did).  But a lot of that hate is because of who Obama is as a person: they flat out can't accept him as an American at all, which is where the Birther obsession and the Kenyan Socialist obsession and Secret Muslim bomb-thrower obsession all come from.  That's not because he's a Democrat: Clinton never got this level of outrage, at worst he was a philandering pot-smoking hippie to them.

But racism is only part of the problem here.  The Southern Conservative mindset is obsessed with "their" rights above the rights of everyone else.  To them, they've got a right to abide their own laws, they've got a right to ignore laws they don't like.  The old strain of Nullification, the belief in State Rights that under the 10th Amendment they can do anything at the state level and to hell with anything federal law or Supreme Court interpretations of federalism - say, the court's approval of the Health Care Reform law (aka Obamacare) - have to say about it.

The Southern Conservative - the template of the modern Far Right wingnut - has no true love for the Federal Government, especially not a Federal government that insists on civil rights or regulatory practices.  The Republican outrage towards a 14th Amendment that both applies due process to all states and recognizes equal citizenship to all Americans is as much a target of their anger as Obama himself.

And all that anger, all that frustration has led them to this shore.  To a point where they don't mind - hell, they WANT to do this - shutting down the federal government the Far Right wingnuts view as The Enemy.

The Civil War is not over.  Not as long as there are wingnuts out there convinced of their radicalism - as Sully notes, this hasn't been true conservatism in ages - against the very concept of a United States of America.  No matter how much they try to wrap themselves up in the Stars And Stripes, they've made it abundantly clear they are the banner carriers of the Stars And Bars.  The Far Right Wingnuts want to Nullify laws they don't like.  They want to punish - if not banish - political leaders they don't like.

The Far Right Wingnuts want to rule or ruin.  We've seen them rule and it wasn't pretty.  Now they want to ruin.  At all costs.  And the way the situation is now, they're ruining us no matter what the rest of the nation wants.

For the LOVE OF GOD, stop voting Republican.

A Thing Or Two About Anonymous Comments

Just to let you know, there is a practical reason for NOT posting as Anonymous to this blogger.com hosted site:

Anonymous comments can end up in the SPAM folder.

I'd also like to add another thing about Anonymous comments:

I'm not a huge fan of them.

So far, my experience with Anonymous posters have been bleak and rude and very unhelpful.  I've found that the Anonymous people accuse me of being things I'm not, relishing the fact that since I can't tell who they are I can't return the favor other than pointing out their folly (which they'll ignore anyway).  I've found that the Anonymous person to be something of a coward, refusing to put their name to a political position, preferring to hide in the shadow and think themselves clever for hiding so well.

If I ever post an Anonymous Trolling Comment of Little Worth, it's because I want to make a point of how foolish that troll's comment really is.  Most of the rest of them I leave in the SPAM folder.

If you want to leave a comment, do so.  But have the decency to put your name to it, especially if you're going out of your way to insult somebody.  If you're insulting me, heh, I can laugh it off.  I've survived middle school: I've heard worse.  Insult someone else, you'll get called on it.  But own up to what you write: you owe yourself that much.  If you can't respect yourself to put your name to your opinion, how the hell should you expect us to respect you for it?

I Miss Shardtober and City of Heroes

Anybody else here from Champion Server?  Remember when I would host Shardtober task force runs every October weekend?

Sigh.

I miss playing hero.

Dear NCSoft: I hope your stock sinks to pennies on the dollar so we gamers can buy it up and bring City of Heroes back.

cross-posting with my other blog

How To Survive The Impending Shutdown In Three Easy Steps

Considering we're facing the last day before October 1st when a new budget has to kick in - either with a Continuing Resolution or an actual budget - and that the odds are very high that the Republicans' demands will be rejected by the Democrats... we're pretty much facing a government shutdown.

Having survived the Shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, I would like to offer up my expertise on the matter and provide some emotional and spiritual support in these trying times.  So here now is a simple, three-step guide to surviving the Shutdown Showdown of 2013:

1. Don't panic.  The ones inflicting the shutdown - the Far Right - are in fact counting on a lot of people freaking out and calling their elected officials to scream about getting something done.  While the House GOP will get those calls same as the Democrats, the Far Right are so out-of-touch with voters... so willingly out of touch with voters... that they will easily ignore the shouting in their own ears.  They are sociopathic enough to know that while they can endure the screaming, their Democratic opponents - who actually want government to work - may well buckle under the pressure and give in to a handful of demands... at which point the Far Right knows that hostage-taking works and will continue to play this game of destruction.

Now, there will be a lot of people inconvenienced by the shutdown.  That's the whole point of it.  The thing not to do is give the ones pushing the shutdown any satisfaction.  You're just going to have to endure this and wait for the financial sector power leaders to dopeslap enough Republicans for them to pass a clean CR bill.

Voters need to realize something: Washington doesn't really listen to protests anymore unless it's a protest they themselves organized.  When hundreds of thousands marched in the streets against the Iraqi invasion in 2002-03, the media ignored it or dismissed it and the elected officials didn't give a rat's ass.  When hundreds of thousands marched in the streets in favor of immigration reform in 2005-06... take a look, we're still stuck with a broken immigration system.

The only thing our elected officials even pay attention to anymore are election results.  They only care about who wins and who doesn't.  The reason the Far Right Republicans pay no mind to protests is because they've insulated themselves into gerrymandered districts where they can always get re-elected by pandering to the base, not the masses.  Which brings us to...

2. Change your voter ID information.  This will take some time on your part.  You can go online or to a location that will carry voter registration forms - while the federal government agencies are closing down for the shutdown, the county and state offices ought to stay open - and fill out a change of voter identification form.

This step is very important: change your voter ID from whatever party affiliation you've got - Republican or Democrat - to No Party Affiliate or Independent.  Also, change your Ethnic identification - if it asks for one - to Other.  That's all.  This is important because this will eventually screw up the political parties in a variety of ways.  And while it won't do much good right now, hopefully if enough voters change their identities over to NPA as well as hide their ethnic identity on the records, it will screw up the parties' ability to craft out gerrymandered districts.

Now, the deal is the states are not supposed to be creating districts for partisan gain.  But the law is one thing: the practice is another.  Parties dominating in a state use specially designed software programs to calculate out the best ways to carve out districts by ethnicity - some states by law have to carve out minority-majority districts - and by party affiliation (they're not supposed to, but they know the loopholes to mask what they're doing).  This is why here in Florida even though there's a 800,000 voter advantage to Democrats over Republicans, the Republican-controlled legislature still figures out how to create more Republican districts than Democrat.

Ah, but what if a massive majority of registered voters were suddenly No Party Affiliate?  There's a good 2 million now out of 11 million registered in Florida... what if it's suddenly 6 million, more than the Dems and more than the GOP put together?  The state lege could still figure out a few things by ethnicity - Black-majority communities by census are bound to be Democratic by default when 98 percent of Blacks vote that way - but now they can't tell exactly where to make their cuts into urban and suburban areas to ensure GOP-friendly districts.  No more safe districts in Florida for Republicans.  If they gerrymander the wrong way they could make it more Democratic-leaning than if they just did it by population density like they're supposed to.

It's also pretty liberating to not be tied down to one party.  You'll still get their junk mail begging for donations, but you're no longer under any kind of peer pressure to subsume your political beliefs to a group that will just ignore 'em.

Meanwhile...

3. When the time comes, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

Don't listen to the "both sides do it" bullshit.  The Republicans are totally on board with crashing the government and ruining the nation's credit rating.  Yes, the Democrats have voted before against the debt ceiling and they rail against the Continuing Resolutions that make do for budgets when they're in the minority.  But the Democrats don't schedule an entire government shutdown around it.  My God, some of the Republicans came out of their Saturday pep rally openly cheering what they were planning to do.

The Democrats never held up an entire government like this to pass basically an entire Presidential platform (Romney/Ryan's 2012) that got rejected by a solid majority of American voters.

And the Democrats never pushed an agenda like this that was so sociopathic, where the Republicans want to kill off a health care reform package designed to help more people, not less.  We're talking about a Republican Party so obsessed with punishing poor people they are willing to cut food stamp aid by $39 billion under the argument that "the poor just gotta suck it up".

And we're talking about a political party in the modern Republicans who refuse to negotiate on good faith, issuing demands so far to the right there is no room for Obama or anyone on the left to see a point on which to compromise.  A Republican Party that keeps thinking it won everything in 2012 and so ought to get all the pretty prizes it wants.

The Republican Party is going to keep taking hostages and ruin our nation's credit and credibility until they get voted out of power for good.  And even then they may not accept the reality - mostly because the real party leadership (hi Fox Not-News!) aren't elected officials, meaning they won't get burned if the GOP no longer has legislative or executive powers - but at least they won't be in any position to ruin our lives for a good long while.

So there you have it.  Just follow those three easy steps and you'll get through this showdown crisis just fine.

Also, stock up on a lot of bottled water, portable battery extensions for your tablet devices, and food for yourselves and your pets.  ...You know, just in case.

You Know, I Thought This Redshirts Guy Was Familiar...

There was this article I read a few years back - I think TBogg over on Firedoglake website highlighted it or something, or maybe on Balloon Juice - about the three primary types of political ideology in the United States.  Liberal, Conservative, and Libertarian.  And how the blog writer despised all three.

It was titled "I Hate Your Politics."

It was hilarious.  It oversimplified the political traits of all three, true, but sarcasm or satire work best when it's correct on the details.  I could copy/paste some of the article quotes from there to here, but that wouldn't be fair to you.  You HAVE TO READ THE WHOLE THING.  Click that link above.  Read it.  Learn it.  Live it.  You'll laugh, you'll cry, it'll become a part of you.  Then come back here because I crave your attention and still have a few more things to say.

(insert chamber music here).

Okay, you back?  ...oh okay... quick bathroom break, see you in three minutes...

(awkward wait)

Anyway, so here I was about a month ago reading up on the Hugo Award winners - as both a librarian and a sci-fi / comic book geek, I have an interest - and I see the winning novel this year was Redshirts, a meta-fictional delving into the lives of the ill-fated crew members who tend to die on science fiction space opera shows.  And the author's name is John Scalzi.

And I think to myself Wait, I know this guy.

I admit I don't read as much science fiction lit as I should in order to keep my geek cred fresh - partly because my collection management duties focus more on non-fiction - so I hadn't really noticed that Scalzi has been penning a few good novels here and there (I'd been reading more Iain M. Banks and Terry Pratchett lately, so that's my excuse).  I merely recognized the name as someone who'd written a blog entry about politics that I recalled was twisted and funny.

So, yeah, I go diving back in and find that I've got the Whatever article still saved as a bookmark on my browser.  And yeah, it's him.

And so now, a lot of things about what Scalzi wrote about libertarians makes a whole shitload of sense.

Here, I will copy and paste this part:

Never got over the fact they weren't the illegitimate children of Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand; currently punishing the rest of us for it. Unusually smug for a political philosophy that’s never gotten anyone elected for anything above the local water board...  Blissfully clueless that Libertarianism is just great as long as it doesn't actually involve real live humans... Libertarians blog with a frequency that makes one wonder if they’re actually employed somewhere or if they have loved ones who miss them... Socially slow — will assume other people actually want to talk about legalizing hemp and the benefits of a polyamorous ethos when all these other folks really want is to drink beer and play Grand Theft Auto 3. Libertarianism the official political system of science fiction authors, which explains why science fiction is in such a rut these days... 

Back when I first read it (about 2007, maybe earlier), I wasn't entirely sure why Scalzi was chewing out libertarians for screwing up modern sci-fi literature (unless he was tuned out by John Ringo's stuff).  I hadn't noticed Scalzi was getting his works being published when I first read this (he's updated / upgraded the blog site since last I visited, back then I didn't see the About The Writer or a link to his books).  But now I'm looking at his career and I see why he's pissed.

Scalzi's been involved in publishing and editing for more than a decade, some of it in traditional markets and a few years working with science fiction pubs.  As such, he's probably been exposed to more horrifically bad science fiction story submissions than the average Human,Vulcan, Klingon, Minbari, Silurian, or small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

This is part of the Sturgeon's Law: that 90 percent of everything is shit.  Since Sturgeon was an acclaimed sci-fi writer, he came up with what he called the revelation when he got tired of defending science fiction as a genre when the critics kept using the worst of sci-fi - the bad aliens, the bland ideologies, the squicky sex - to belittle it.  And in a way, Sturgeon is right about 90 percent of the stuff out there is bad, regardless of genre or format: 90 percent movies, 90 percent music, 90 percent art, 90 percent fashion, some of that shit is bad shit.  It's just that the worst of that 90 percent, well it rankles on you if you're a fervent lover of that music/fashion/art/film/literature genre.  You live for the 10 percent that wows and enjoys and delights, but if you get nothing but shit most of the time it's gonna make you jaded at best.

So in a way I see where Scalzi's coming from when he dumped on libertarianism like that in his article.  He's probably seen one too many sci-fi fantasy stories of a Randian-inspired utopia filled with bland archetypes and bad sex.  And he's pretty much right about it dominating and ruining a lot of current sci-fi: a lot of libertarians love to write speculative fiction / alternate world stories where their ideology can flourish (since, as I've noted meself, utopias don't flourish in the real world), which gets it shoved into the science fiction shelves at your local ebook retailer.

I hope this means I grok Scalzi's political stance.  Probably not, there may be nuances to his ideology that drives his world-view.  But I'm damn certain I know why he hates libertarians: it's all that self-indulgent terrible writing (and it's getting worse now that there's cheap self-publishing and no editorial control).  Damn you, libertarians: why can't you write more Harlequin romance novels and leave us geeks alone...

Presidential Character: Week Thirty-Three, Serving Crow Since 1948

A statesman is a politician who's been dead for ten years. - Harry S. Truman

To flashback to earlier Presidential Character reviews, I've often lamented the failings of how the party candidates screw up their selecting Vice Presidents to balance out an election ticket.  Ever since the ticket system was designed - 1800 election with Jefferson / Burr - it's been more headache than solution.

Part of the problem has been - remains - the need to literally balance the ticket between the winning Presidential candidate representing the party with someone who represents one of the losing factions that needed placating.  As a result you'd get a Veep who would not only be philosophically opposed to the President but most likely psychologically opposed as well.  You'd start off with an administration behaving in one way following the President's Active/Passive - Positive/Negative habits... and then if something bad happened to that President you'd get an administration suddenly following different traits, sometimes for the worse.

More often than not - Harrison to Tyler, Taylor to Fillmore, Lincoln to Johnson, Harding to Coolidge - you'd get a radical shift of personalities that ruined the political dynamics of the era.  There's been a few transitions where the incoming Vice President - Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt - proved to be a boon rather than a bust, but when it comes down to it the parties ought to do a better job of selecting their Vice President candidates with an eye towards a risky future.

The first time - in some respects the only time - a serious effort to line up a candidate for the Vice Presidency was in 1944 for Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth campaign.  It was pretty much a given that FDR was going to win: the nation was full into World War II, things were going well on the home front and the front lines, and FDR had remained popular with voters.  There was no need to "change horse in midstream," the standard argument against voting out an incumbent during wartime.

However, everyone within FDR's circle knew Roosevelt was dying (himself included).  In 1940 Roosevelt had campaigned with an extreme liberal Henry Wallace to shore up the far left faction of the Democrats on the eve of World War II, but Wallace's soft stance on Communism (the Soviet kind) made the party worry by 1944: while the Allies had teamed up with Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union to defeat the common enemy of Hitler's Axis, Stalin was still a devil and having someone like Wallace eagerly dealing with him as President was a horrifying thought.

The party leadership - the backroom dealers and FDR's inner circle - began searching for a suitable replacement.  One name kept coming up: Harry S. Truman, Senator out of Missouri.

Truman wasn't the first choice, though: James Byrnes out of South Carolina was.  Byrnes had served in a variety of state and federal offices, and was one of FDR's closest advisors.  But where Wallace was too liberal, Byrnes was too conservative, and Truman quickly became the kind of compromise candidate a party chooses for the top half of the ticket.

It wasn't hard to see why Truman's name raced to the top of the list.  He'd been a solid and loyal party member since before World War I, someone who may have come from a corrupt political machine but was himself honest and incorruptible, and a major Senatorial player supporting the New Deal from the get-go.  Truman served in the first world war, earning the rank of captain and showing his stripes as a battlefield leader.  Really making his reputation was his stellar work on an oversight committee during the first years of the War Effort that clamped down on waste and war profiteering (on a budget of $360,000 Truman saved the nation around $15 billion from waste and fraud).

But there had to have been another factor at play here, and James David Barber makes note of it during his review of Truman's style:

Truman's style in decision making had two large elements. One was the close attention to detail, the studious homework he drew out of his early reading, his experience in detailed jobs, and his successful canteen management and personal reconnaissance in the Army.  Truman as President could and did study hard... The other element was the decisiveness - the habit of nearly impulsive assertion of definite answers - that was the bring him such difficulties as he "shot from the hip"...  In a world of uncertain people, Harry's style of deciding - yes or no, on the spot, right now - could be impressive, could bring him a reputation for leadership. (p.313)

Barber had Truman in the Active-Positive category, partly because of that decision-making (pure Active) but also because Truman was a hard political campaigner: working in the rough world of state-level politics - especially southern politics with its racial issues and populist anger - taught Truman to fight hard for the offices he campaigned for.  While not a practiced or well-known orator, Truman was a font of quips and one-liners, a Deadpan Snarker who disdained puffery and went after what he saw was the truth (and because of that attention to detail Barber noted, it was truth based on researched fact).  A-Ps in Barber's evaluation were tireless campaigners, enjoying not so much the fight but the chance to get in front of the issues, make a case, confront a problem.

Roosevelt himself was an Active-Positive, and one thing A-Ps love are fellow A-Ps (the other Roosevelt thought he found a fellow Active-Positive in Taft which was why Taft got tabbed as his successor... when Taft proved Passive-Positive Teddy came to regret that move).  Roosevelt saw in Truman a dedicated New Dealer, someone who would carry the banner of the cause on his own terms but still one that FDR would recognize; a tireless worker whose fraud-busting efforts showed a commitment to honest government.

Ironically, Truman didn't want the Vice Presidency - he was convinced Byrnes would be the choice, and even kept a nominating speech for Byrnes with him during the early stages of the convention - and had to be pressed into taking the nomination during a staged phone call between FDR and a room full of party leaders.  Truman knew to some extent of FDR's frail health, but wasn't entirely in the know, and so in most respects he was genuinely stunned when 82 days into the fourth term FDR died and Truman became President.

While Truman didn't want the job, the A-P trait of being Self-Confident became the defining trait of his administration.  Truman's Presidency desk famously displayed a message: The Buck Stops Here.  And Truman meant it: when he made a decision he followed through, owned up to it, made his arguments, did his best to accept the criticisms of his allies and did even better shooting down the criticisms of his enemies.

The clearest example of Truman's decision-making was his earliest decision: making the call on using atomic weapons on key Japanese targets.  Having only been told of the Manhattan Project right after ascending to the Oval Office, and facing in mid-summer the sobering possibility of a massive invasion of a fortified Japan.  Confronted with the projected losses following the fierce and bloody Battle of Okinawa - both military and civilian lives lost on the Japanese mainland into the hundreds of thousands - and also confronted with weapons that could fell a single city with a single bomb, Truman made the decision to use the bombs our nation had to press Japan into surrender before a mass invasion was needed.

The decision has been debated since the moment it was made.  Proponents siding with Truman noting that Japan's martial culture would have guaranteed a massive and bloody defense against any landings; opponents arguing that the use of such weapons - more lethal to civilians than military targets - were tantamount to war crimes.  In hindsight an argument could have been made that diplomacy could have worked: but it would have taken months or years with no guarantee of peaceful resolution, and the Japanese Army was adamantly against any surrender.

If the estimated casualties of Operation Downfall were correct even at the most conservative - about 23,000 during the first 90 days - it would have been bloody but far less than the total death count of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (150,000).  If the larger calculations throwing in a civilian uprising were right, it would have gotten into 1.7 million American casualties and 5 million Japanese, and those death tolls for the atomic bombs would have been a more acceptable - but still painful - alternative.

Truman owned up to the decision of dropping the bombs - he insisted on military targets only - but wasn't aware at the time of how destructive such a weapon could be.  When it came out how the devastation wiped out civilians as much as military bases, Truman had to have learned from that... because the next time the use of atomic weapons came up - the Korean War, and China's intervention into it - he flat-out opposed it.

Past that, Truman's Active-Positive traits carried him through his first term.  He carried on the War Effort towards victory in Europe and in Japan.  He presided over the formation of a United Nations, an attempt to improve on the failed League of Nations, this time with an active United States backing it up.  Remembering his own experiences of post-war economic downturn after World War I, Truman did what he could to keep the post-war economy churning through price controls.  When unions struck, Truman used the power of the office to "draft" the unions and nationalize the affected industries to keep them working.

When Stalin openly reneged on his promises and seized control of Soviet-held nations in 1947, Truman issued his Doctrine of supporting "all free peoples who are resisting subjugation."  This went towards keeping Greece and Turkey from falling under Soviet domination (albeit at the cost of rather messy civil wars).  This was followed up with the Marshall Plan, an ambitious foreign aid program to rebuild war-torn Western Europe before the Stalin-backed Communist factions could use the economic malaise to their advantage.  And part of all this was the Berlin Airlift, Truman's solution to a Soviet blockade of West Berlin (Germany and Berlin had been divided up into allied-controlled sections, with West Berlin a sore point in Stalin's control of East Germany).  Rather than press a military confrontation on the ground, Truman coordinated flights into West Berlin daring Stalin to shoot down the planes performing publicly recognized humanitarian supply efforts.  Pretty much the best display of Truman's Adaptive skill, it worked: Stalin wouldn't cross that line and the blockade was lifted.

All of these were actions an Active-Positive President would preside over: the use of government power not for the personal gain but for the gains of others.  He didn't display the A-P trait of Adaptive, but instead showed the willingness to be Confident in the use of executive power to get done what needed doing.  But wait, there's more.

Harry S. Truman was the first President since Reconstruction to make serious gains in ensuring civil rights for Blacks.  He had followed the struggles of Black soldiers during efforts at integration during World War II and had been sickened by the reports of lynchings that occurred during and after the war.  By 1948 he issued an executive order desegregating the armed forces, the first major blow for civil rights since the 15th Amendment.

Truman also became the first global leader in 1948 to recognize Israel's right to exist as a nation.  Warned it would upset Arab nations and cut off American access to much-needed oil, Truman couldn't ignore the fact that the Nazis had just attempted a Final Solution to wipe out Jews altogether, and that the Jewish people required a homeland to ensure their survival.

In these, Truman was using the A-P initiative of getting ahead on civil rights issues and sticking to it.  He pursued these points even in the face of political opposition, especially as 1948 was an election year.

By 1948 Truman and the Democratic Party was facing long odds indeed.  Despite the successful conclusion to the war, there was the struggle to rebuild Europe and Asia and the home front, there had come a kind of political fatigue to the whole thing.  Democrats had been in charge of things since 1933, a full decade had passed and then some, and the strain of a prolonged rule was showing.  The failures of the Republicans leading up to the Great Depression had almost been forgotten.  Truman's popularity wasn't all that great, and the Democratic Party had developed serious internal factions during FDR's prolonged tenure.

Henry Wallace was pretty bitter about getting booted out of the Veep spot for being too liberal, and like all wingnuts (leftist and rightist both) was truly convinced of his liberal platform.  He broke off and formed his own Progressive campaign.  When the Democratic platform at the convention came out with a strong civil rights policy that Truman publicly adopted, the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) walked out of the convention.  And when Truman signed that executive order desegregating the armed forces two weeks later, South Carolina's (yeah, them again) governor Strom Thurmond announced his own campaign for the Presidency on a racist "States Rights" platform.  The Democratic Party had basically disintegrated into three parts, where the Electoral system favored two parties (Democrat and Republican).  The Republican Party - nominee Thomas Dewey as their candidate - could pretty much lean back and coast to victory.

Except for the fact that the Republicans and Dixiecrats and Progressives were all up against Active-Positive Harry S. Truman.  A-Ps love the fight not for the sake of the fight but for getting something accomplished.  And Truman was up for this.

Truman's campaign was aggressive from the start.  He went after the Republicans in Congress for their conservative attempts at culling back the New Deal and at the gains workers - and an increasing middle class - had made.  Calling them "Do-Nothing", Truman made a show of calling for a special session of Congress to pass economic legislation.  Considering it a trap of sorts, the Republicans showed up but did little, inadvertently playing into Truman's accusations.  Truman effectively ignored both Wallace and Thurmond, since they were both in effect single-issue candidates lacking genuine broad appeal.  And Truman went on a whirlwind railroad tour of the nation, derisively called "whistle-stops" by Republican-backing newspapers but in fact hosting turnouts in the hundreds of thousands of supporters.

The national media didn't even seem to notice.  Mostly owned by conservatives or following "conventional wisdom", the newspapers failed to keep up with any polling past September and failed to notice Truman's public support.  It had become "conventional wisdom" that Truman was unliked and that it was due time for Republicans to return to the White House.  Assurances of Dewey's victory in November were rampant.  Right up until Election Night itself.

From the National Archives.  There's a reason Truman is smiling, and it involves being a badass.

That photo is arguably one of the most famous in American history.  One of the great reminders that "it ain't over until it's over," and that Truman had the political skill of the Active-Positive driving him to success (also it was another reminder that the geniuses inside the Beltway aren't as smart or as informed as they think they are).

The second term of office proved much tougher (history proves us that, regardless of the success or skill of any President): above all, Stalin encouraged his North Korean allies to invade South Korea, setting off the Korean War and the first major test of Truman's containment policy.

It was Truman's Confident trait that caused half the problems he faced going into this fight: he pursued an international coalition through the newly formed UN as both an effort to boost the UN's prestige and to avoid getting a declaration of war out of Congress that he felt wasn't necessary.  Both moves hurt him stateside.

The other half of the problem was dealing with Douglas MacArthur.  One of the most quixotic generals in American history, MacArthur could be a strategic genius and a tactical moron.  At the same time.  Having blundered through the first half of the Second World War and then regaining prestige and popularity towards the end of it, MacArthur was the general placed in charge of the Korean War efforts.  Pulling off one of the best military maneuvers in history at Inchon - making an amphibious assault under harsh conditions - MacArthur proceeded to overplay the UN's agenda by pursuing the North Korean forces right up to China's borders well enough for China to worry about invasion.  Despite Truman's warnings not to provoke the Chinese, MacArthur did so... and drew the Chinese 2 million strong into what was supposed to be a small-scale police action.

When the tide of fighting turned to stalemate, MacArthur pressed for the use of nuclear weapons, and worked under the belief that he had control of the arsenal - and ultimately the Army - and not Truman.  This was a critical moment in American history.  While there had been differences between Presidents and Generals before, tradition had developed that the civilian leadership controlled the military, that the President was Commander-in-Chief and that it kept the military in check.  MacArthur believed in Total Victory regardless of the objectives: Truman believed in containing Communism but avoiding perpetual warfare. Worse, MacArthur was privately and publicly undercutting Truman's authority as President.

Truman fired the son-of-a-bitch.

One other thing to note about Active-Positive Presidents: they do not do things because they are popular.  They do things because they are hard, and worth doing.  Firing MacArthur was political suicide in 1951: calls for impeachment were rampant and MacArthur returned a hero.  As the months passed and as Congress investigated Truman's decision, a lot of MacArthur's bullheaded actions were made public, and the decision Truman made became reasonable.  But the damage was done.  And Truman took the heat for it.

By 1952 the Korean War was a stalemated mess.  America got hit with a recession, and Truman's popularity was right around 22 percent, one of the lowest ratings in the history of polling such data.  When Truman's early forays into primaries for re-election went sour, he saw the writing on the wall and made the decision to not run again (he was exempt from the passage of the 22nd Amendment capping Presidential terms).  Truman did not leave office on the best of terms, but he left them on his terms and took his retirement to heart.

When historians speak of Truman's legacy, the first thing they'll note is that Truman is one of the first Presidents to have his reputation improve dramatically within years of leaving office.  It helped that a lot of what Truman believed in - keeping the New Deal agenda strong, avoiding full war in Korea/China, avoiding further use of nuclear weapons - turned out to have been the right calls.  Whenever a President drops significantly in the polls nowadays, they'll point straight to Truman and use him as an example of being unpopular but correct (despite how incorrect such a failing President might be).  Truman tends to appear in the Top Ten of any Presidential list ever since such lists were made, and if he's not he's usually slipped to Number 11.

Can't end this Truman fest without posting one of his best known quips: My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.

I motherfucking love this guy (except for the whole "Nuking Japan" thing, and even then I'll grant that was a tough call to make).  I'm glad I share a birthday with him.

Next Up: Everybody Likes Ike... Despite His Traits

Hostage Taking Cannot Fail, It Can Only Be Failed...

The Shutdown Showdown of 2013 is kicking into third gear as I type this, and it ain't pretty.

From The National Review and thence to other news sources like ThinkProgress, the GOP House leadership has crafted a list of demands for Obama and the Democratic Senate leadership to surrender to:

As the nation moves dangerously close to a government shutdown on Oct. 1, House leaders are shifting their focus to the next big fiscal fight: raising the nation’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit by one year before Oct. 17. On Wednesday night, Republicans circulated an outline of demands, threatening to push the nation into default unless President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate agree to enact a wish list of Republican priorities.

Though Obama has repeatedly insisted that he would not negotiate over the must-pass legislation, leadership is hoping to satisfy conservative members by including every “major piece of the Republican agenda” save a “ban on late-term abortions — and some lawmakers who oppose abortion were arguing to add that,” the Washington Post reports...

Igor Volsky's ThinkProgress article - alongside Derek Thomspon's over at The Atlantic - proceeded to break down the demands, which I can summarize here as well:

1. Delay Obamacare by one year.  Rather than defund or eliminate outright, the Republicans would at least want Obamacare stopped from being enacted before more Americans find out the health care reforms might actually work.  At least until the 2014 midterms, during which the Tea Party candidates can indulge in more fear-mongering to scare up votes and campaign moneys.  Meanwhile, the delay will cut into elements of Obamacare that have already kicked in, causing even more confusion.
2. Weaken/defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Created as a response to the massive fraud that led to the 2007 Economic Crisis / Great Recession, the CFPB is a bogeyman agency for the Far Right who prefer to deregulate everything and let the uber-rich banks defraud everyone until there's another need for a massive bank bailout.
3. Approval to build the Keystone Pipeline.  This is a pet issue for Republicans who view this as "more oil more money" kind of thing as their energy platform (drill baby drill).  This also includes letting the Coal industry and offshore drilling companies getting everything they want.
4. Enact the budget and tax plan created by Paul Ryan.  It's basically the plan he campaigned for as Romney's Veep partner, and it basically disqualifies the fact that a majority of Americans voted against it by voting against Romney/Ryan.  Plus the simple fact the Ryan budget is evil.
5. Cut funding to health care and social safety net programs, and enact a method of "means testing" Medicare (what is "means testing"?  It's where they test a person's eligibility for Medicare, and the GOP can be mean about it.).  Means testing, my ass: Republicans want any excuse to cut people off Medicare, they just want to cover up what they're actually doing by hiding behind Orwellian wording.
6. Massive cuts to the federal employee pension fund.  Considering the massive number of people reaching retirement age, this is bound to not work out well.
7. Block recent federal regulations capping greenhouse gases.  Because we all know that greenhouse gases are vital to the functioning of our proud country.
8. Tort reform.  Like it was the lawyers' fault doctors commit malpractice or corporations commit fraud/failed safety standards.
9. Passing the Republicans' ideas of "jobs bills"... which are A) cutting safety regulations everywhere and with little to no evidence ending those regs would create more jobs, and B) massive tax cuts to corporations that won't require those tax savings go to actual job creation or wage growth.

I'm with Andrew Sullivan on this: "why not ask for Obama's resignation while they're at it?"

What the sheer gob-smacking scale of these demands means is that the GOP effectively wants to nullify the last election entirely (except of course for their gerrymandered, no-popular vote House majority). The staggering thing about this party as it now exists is that it views the governance of the other party as always effectively illegitimate. Elections do not matter. Only their agenda matters. No compromise is possible, even when this kind of catastrophic default is hanging over our heads. In fact, the danger of catastrophic default is something they relish in order to undo the basic principles of democratic government.

This is not a bargaining position; they already voted for the budget that requires us to raise the debt ceiling. It is a bald attempt to reverse elections as the mark of a democracy and replace them with endless blackmail until they get their way. This isn't conservatism. It’s pure constitutional vandalism...

Sullivan later makes a question about American history where a party in the minority made such an egregious list of demands... and he quickly got an answer from readers who pointed out that yes this has happened before.  Back in 1860, when the Republicans were poised to elect Lincoln into the White House, the slavery-owner leadership of the Southern Democrats faction threatened secession unless Lincoln caved on all demands.  And when it became clear the South had little to threaten with, they seceded and forced the civil war (anyone calling it a War of Northern Aggression is selling you snake oil.  The South wanted a fight and by God they got one).

It shouldn't be a surprise that the end result of Nixon's Southern Strategy would have the southern conservative agenda seek another go at wrecking the nation.  We shouldn't be at all surprised that the Far Right - in the House, Senate, and wingnut media - want push this issue well over the cliff (no matter how much the party's own leadership is aware of the disaster that awaits them).  Their way or the highway.

This "negotiation" over the debt ceiling and the budget by having the Republicans demand this "We Get Everything WE Want" wish list is in my mind akin to a bank robber taking hostages during a heist... and then demanding that not only the cops let him go with all the cash from that bank, but that the cops help him rob three or four more banks right down the road because dammit he's in the right.  That's not negotiating.  That's not even practical hostage-taking.  That's batshit insanity. (pardon my Swedish)

There is no reason for Obama or Reid to answer this list at all.  The Republicans can scream all they want about who to blame when the debt ceiling crisis reaches the Defcon-1 level.  Insisting the majority party enact the worst elements of the minority party's agenda isn't democracy, isn't republican, and isn't sane.

And the polls are reflecting that, yes Americans know exactly who to blame if the shit goes down.

I want every voter to remember this by November 2014: The Republicans do not care to compromise, they do not care to govern, they do not care period.  They want it all.

Please for the love of God vote them out.

Indulging In a Little Fantasy Here

The thing about sitting on the outside looking in, to be honest, is that this makes you a critic.

It's easy to sit on the sidelines and complain about the stupid moves your football team makes.  To be fair, today for the Tampa Bay Bucs was a stupid "why the hell did you waste everyone's time with this crap" day.  Anyway.  It's easy to look at the political circus inside the Beltway and go "What.  The.  F-CK."  Criticizing is easy: you just point and mock.

But there's gotta be something more than that.  Mockery doesn't do much other than generate laughs and make the targets unhappy, if they even care about your opinion.  The best type of critique is the constructive critique: recognizing an honest attempt and building on it, noting a flaw that can be fixed and suggesting how that fix can be made.

When I started this blog 499 posts ago, it was designed to be a place to provide something constructive: suggested amendment ideas that would reform the flaws in government and law that had been weakening our system and letting things fall apart.  Of course, things being what they were this place quickly revolved around the "things p-ssing me off" at the state, national and global level to where I changed the title and intent.  (That was Post 400, just in April of this year.  I'd been blogging like crazy since then... )

But I'd like to think I can still do some constructive work here.  Something of importance.  Something that could get a dialogue going.  Something to stroke the ego... wait no, even better the SUPEREGO!  ...what do you mean, I've gotten that confused with my Id?  Dammit...

So, here now, if you can indulge in my fantasies a little bit, is Post 500:

Let's just say, just humor me for a moment here, that on Nov. 8, 2016, through no fault of my own I'm able to convince 60 million of my fellow Americans with enough Electoral pull into voting for me as the 45th President of the United States.  In a three-way race between myself, Democratic Martin O'Malley, and Republican Rick Santorum 60 million would be more than enough to win the popular vote (O'Malley having earned the Dem nomination when Hillary Clinton bowed out to health issues and Santorum surviving a brutal 50-way primary fight between every Tea Partier rabblerouser on the circuit), and the Electoral count for me getting Florida as a Favored Crazy Resident, winning over moderates in the Midwest states, and a surprise win in California when my roast of Kevin Smith turns into a laugh riot highlight of the year (O'Malley comes in second with key wins for Texas and New York, Santorum a distant third getting only South Carolina and Mississippi).

If I've won over 60 million voters I'd like to think it was because of my key platform position of Jobs Jobs and JOBS.  Hell, this would be my bumper sticker:

I admit I will need a graphics design office when I campaign...

Our economy is still weak on job creation.  It's even worse when it comes to fair, affordable wages.  Unless there's a massive turnaround with a jobs stimulus bill between now and 2016, the need for "Good Jobs at Good Wages" is going to be high.

That blue line is CEO pay.  See those flat lines at the bottom?  That the minimum wage and also workers' wages.

With regards to other platform issues I'd run on, it'd mostly be the amendment ideas I've been hawking over the years, with a focus on making Congress more accountable to their ethical requirements (i.e. STOP LYING) and a focus on ensuring fair regulation of businesses to ensure workplace safety and consumer protection.  I'd have a foreign policy platform of diplomacy over military action, a domestic program to reform the NSA to require more stringent warrants and strict oversight, and a requirement to stop Hollywood from making unnecessary movie remakes.  Seriously, we're at the point the studios are going to remake a movie released two months ago...

Can I get any of my platform enacted by a Congress riven by partisan strife?  Sure.  Of course.  Dear reader, please note: this is my fantasy.  Let me indulge in the belief that I would march right into the halls of Congress and get every critter in office fainting over my mere presence.  With my State of the Union speech in hand, I will parade before the nation and say for all to know... (gets shouted down by wingnuts crying all "Liar!" "Socialist Fascist HitlerStalin!" "Smelly pants!" "Booooooggggggeerrrrrrrrrrrrr...")

Wow.  Even in my fantasy, they're not gonna let me get a word in...

What say you, people?  Do I have a shot in 2016? Anybody?

How It Came To This, A Government Shutdown

Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountains. Like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the west. Behind the hills, into shadow. How did it come to this? - JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

It hasn't yet come to pass, but the inevitability of a government shutdown is as certain as a sunrise on October 1st.

The damage of another shutdown, similar to the ones we had in 1995 and 1996, are pretty clear: lost earnings reaching into the billions, petty inconveniences to average Americans, loss of confidence in the governance of the nation.  The stock market as always is worried and at risk.

Shutdowns are serious business.  The results of the previous ones didn't go so great for the party that pushed for them: the Republicans ended up getting the blame, failed to achieve much of what they wanted, and made Bill Clinton look good for his re-election in 1996.  The more recent shutdown threat in 2011 over the debt ceiling tanked Congress' polling numbers from which it has yet to recover.  And the polls are showing that a majority of Americans don't want a government shutdown, and will blame the Republicans if one takes place.

And yet, here we are.  The Republicans - and no matter how they try the blame game on Democrats ("If only the Democrats would compromise on everything we want like tax cuts and defunding Obamacare and infinite military spending...!") - are pushing for this showdown.

How did it come to this?

An interesting reason is that a sizable number of the Republican voting base want a shutdown in the first place.  There's that strain of uber-libertarianism that doesn't so much want "small" government as it wants NO government: full deregulation, no taxes, free reign on finance and do-what-thou-will will be the Law of the Land.  A kind of conservative variation of anarchism that would make Randians weep for joy and a majority of Americans weep in pain.  The faction of the GOP that wants to prove government is ineffective and will happily crash it over a cliff to prove it.

The other faction of that Far Right voting base isn't as extreme as that, but are convinced that the threat of a shutdown - if not the shutdown itself - will force the Democrats to defund Obamacare.  These are the voters who have been told since 2009 about how Obama isn't really the President, that Obama is a socialist fascist fake American, that he's imposing Sharia law and taking our guns (personally, in the dead of night, through 10 miles of snow, uphill, both ways), and that above all Obama's signature health care reform law is unconstitutional and full of death panels.  Having been told for four straight years, these are the people who wholeheartedly believe Obamacare is outright evil... and that you don't compromise over evil...

But it's not just the base.  This is an action being pursued by the elected officials in the GOP-led House - not so much in the Senate, where Ted "All About Me" Cruz is the biggest thumper on the showdown - who have sold themselves as liberators of the Right and have obsessed themselves over eliminating Obamacare at all hazards.  Up to and including the fact that they've voted 41 times now to overturn, kill, or defund Obamacare and yet never find the time to pass a jobs bill for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.  These are the elected officials who are on a singular mission: make Obama a failed President.  They couldn't succeed making him a one-termer, but now they're aiming for the next best thing: force Obama to reject his own signature achievement in office.

Another reason the GOP leadership do not seem so concerned about the fallout from pursuing a government shutdown is that in practical terms it didn't cost the Republican Congress of 1995-96 all that much.  They only lost a handful of seats in the House and gained a couple seats in the Senate that election cycle (the only real loss was making Clinton look good enough to win re-election).

The failing of that logic is that for starters this isn't 1996: in 1996 the economy was booming behind the Internet Tech bubble; in 2013 the economy is still in a recession of failed wage growth and wobbly housing values.  Also, in 1995 and 1996 Congress was functional enough to have passed spending and appropriations that kept much of government functioning quite well during the shutdowns: in 2013, this Congress hasn't passed or agreed to much of anything and is in fact mired in a sequester cutting program that has left government dysfunctional.  A shutdown today would be a disaster, and the GOP doesn't see it.

What does concern the GOP leadership is that voting base they've stirred up the past four years.  Placating the base is far more important to them than actual governance.  For all the reality of incumbents enjoying near-certain re-election wins in general elections, those incumbents are terrified of facing primary challenges.  Say hello to one of the major costs of gerrymandering: outside of the fact that gerrymandering creates wasted votes, these specially-crafted congressional districts are designed so that the party candidate of that district is favored to win no matter what (almost).  The big reason the Republicans held onto the House in 2012 wasn't because of their popularity: it was due to having crafted enough gerrymandered districts to maintain control.  But while it was good for the party in 2012, it's bad for the Republicans in 2014 because the gerrymanders don't stop primaries.

The Far Right base - the Tea Partier faction - is stirred up and angry... and utterly convinced that if "their" elected officials so much as blink towards a compromise with hated Obama, they'll put up an even Further Right wingnut as a challenger.  And the nature of a primary fight is "who can pander the most to the voting base who turns out": primary elections are poorly attended by moderate (aka sensible) party members, and so candidates veer sharply to their base (Dems to their Left, GOP to their Right).  An incumbent could win a general election but before that happens he/she can seriously lose a primary to a more extreme opponent: it has happened before.  The RINO party purge hasn't finished yet: it's even going after incumbents who had purged out RINOs three or four election cycles ago.  And if the extremist candidate replacement is extreme enough, the Republicans could lose what would have been an easy gerrymandered (or Red State) win.

So this is how we got here.  A political party in the Republicans who have been for decades purging out more moderate party leaders until a more partisan faction is in control... and yet the mechanisms they used for those purges are still in place and eagerly purging out the partisans for even worse extremists.  Now fearing their base as much as they pander to it, the Republicans have to pursue an obsessive agenda - defund Obamacare or otherwise make Obama concede to Far Right policy - at all hazards, up to and including a government shutdown and economic crisis for which they'll be blamed and which for most reasons will have far greater repercussions in 2014 than previous shutdowns had in 1996.

And this is all on top of the House GOP voting on a Food Stamps defunding bill that cuts $39 billion in aid to starving families.  Basically an open act of sadism that hurts more poor whites than it does any minority group.  It's like the Republicans WANT to commit political suicide.  Who's gonna be left voting for Republicans by 2014?